[[quoteright:332:[[Webcomic/BrawlInTheFamily http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Cap_6658.jpg]]]][-[[caption-width-right:332:[[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda At least the Rupees max out at four digits these days.]]]]-]

The maximum quantity of something that a game allows. Once you've hit the cap for that particular element, any other factors which would exceed that limit are silently ignored, and may as well not have happened at all.

'''This has a variety of uses in game design, but the gamer is concerned with caps in only a handful of instances:'''# '''Damage caps'''. Many {{RPG}}s cap the amount of damage that can be done by a single attack. Even if the character is strong enough that his attacks would do more based on the game's damage calculation system, any damage past the cap is not dealt. This one is most likely to be set with game balance in mind, but usually only succeeds in making [[DeathOfAThousandCuts weaker multi-hit attacks]] better than single strong attacks.# '''Stat caps'''. The point at which a character's statistics can go no higher. In some games, characters' stats cap only at unfeasibly high levels, but in others (notably the ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' series) the caps are reachable at normal levels and thus are a big deal. Levels themselves often have a cap as well, which may or may not come before reaching other stat caps.# '''Inventory caps'''. The maximum amount of a single item you're allowed to carry. Combined with the HyperspaceArsenal, this can create weird situations, such as the ability to carry 99 Potions and 99 Hi-Potions, but not 100 Potions and 0 Hi-Potions. Also applies to [[OneUp extra lives]] and money.# '''Time caps'''. In games or situations in which you are being timed, the time usually has some upper limit at which it stops counting. The ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' games, for example, stop counting your time at ninety-nine hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds, for example. Usually has no effect on gameplay, unless the programmers royally screwed up (such as in the case of the Berry Glitch from early versions of ''VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire'').# '''Score caps'''. In older games that kept score, it's often possible to amass a score higher than the game can track. This is especially possible in games from the Atari 2600 generation, since they can go on without end if one is a good enough player. Reaching the maximum score in a given game was a point of honor among gamers. Among fans of {{Shmups}}, this is known as a "counter stop," or "kansuto" in Japanese.# '''{{Combo}} caps'''. Many fighting games which count the number of hits in a combo will stop counting at some point, 99 being a popular limit.# '''Unit caps'''. The maximum amount of units, either of a specific kind or all together, that you can have on the field at once in a [[RealTimeStrategy Real Time]] or TurnBasedStrategy game. See ArbitraryHeadcountLimit for more details on this.

There are three kinds of caps:

* '''Designer Imposed Cap:''' A cap deliberately set by the designers, usually to keep play balanced or as an AntiHoarding measure. For example, you might be limited to carrying 15 bombs so you can't plow through the entire game throwing bombs at everything.* '''Hardware Imposed Cap:''' In computer games, caps are sometimes imposed by the hardware. Computers generally store variables (a "variable" is any number that can change, such as HP or MP) in a given location of a fixed size. That size determines the range of the variable. Such caps are [[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne typically one less than an exact power of two]], like '''127''', '''255''', '''32,767''', '''65,535''', which correspond to common formats for integers. ** Related were [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-coded_decimal binary-coded decimal]] variables in earlier games, where each decimal digit is stored in exactly four bits; BCD requires special corrections when doing arithmetic operations, but was much simpler to display and was thus used in many older games (where the programmer had to do all that fiddly stuff by hand) for score counters. Interestingly, this produced results visually indistinguishably from:* '''Interface Induced Caps ("all nines"):''' These are caps of '''9''', '''99''', '''999''', '''9999''', and so on -- the cap is imposed due to the limited space on a menu/status/inventory screen allocated for displaying it. For example, the designer might find that you should be able to hold about 1,000 gold, but this means that it will take up 4 digits on the display, so instead they will make the cap 999. This was more important in old games, where the space taken up by each digit was a fixed space that was often quite substantial, so it was poor form to waste it on a "1" that would only appear when the player had 1,000 gold. (And what practical difference would that extra 1 gold do you anyway?) In rare cases, only the ''display'' is capped (while the actual value is not), resulting in a situation where you might open up your purse of 999 coins to spend 50 gold and still somehow have "999" remaining (because you actually had more than the screen was showing you). In new games, the extra space is usually readily available (as seen in this article's image), but the "all nines" cap is more intuitive for long-time gamers and is used often to this day as a Designer Imposed Cap. Note that in some cases it ''can'' also overlap with the hardware cap: e.g. a 16-bit value can easily hold numbers up to 9,999 , but if you want to hold numbers up to 99,999 you need a 32-bit value.

Games are sometimes not even programmed to cap such counters when they should. They will dutifully add one to a value that can't properly go any higher, resulting in a kind of malfunction known as an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_overflow Integer Overflow]]. This is especially common with old games, because putting in a test for a maximum value would use memory and CPU cycles they didn't have to spare. An overflow might manifest as:* The counter rolls over to zero, just like the odometer in a car. (The computer just discarded the "carry over" digit.)* The counter rolls over to a very negative number, like -32768. (The "carry over" digit was written to the bit used for sign representation.)* The display gets messed up as digits for the overflowed counter "run into" some other information on the display.* Some of the digits become 'nonsense' characters. (This primarily occurs with right-justified displays. [[labelnote:Click here for a longer explanation of this phenomenon]]With right-justified displays, usually the program starts at the rightmost digit and works leftwards. It divides the value by 10, writes the remainder, and moves left, repeating until it either has a value less than 10 or is at the leftmost position, in which case it simply writes whatever value it has left. Stored somewhere in a contiguous memory array are images of the digits "0" through "9"; to draw each digit, it starts at the "0", skips forward as many images as the digit it's supposed to draw, and draws the image it lands on. In the case of the leftmost digit, it assumes the value should be 9 or less; if it's actually 10 or more, the computer keeps counting past the 9, interprets whatever it lands on as image data, and draws that. Some games have more font data for the alphabet after the digits; in these cases, overflowing a counter that's supposed to cap at (for example) 999 will usually display "A00" for 1,000, "B00" for 1100, and so on.[[/labelnote]])* The game locks up, crashes, or starts to act really weird. (Due to the overflow clobbering memory used for something else entirely, or just because the game wasn't written to handle things like a negative counter.)* The game aborts with an error. (Rare except on modern platforms that do automatic range checking for the programmer.)

When a game or display error is caused by the level number (or something directly affected by the level number), and makes it impossible to continue, it's a KillScreen.

In gaming, 'cap' as a verb can also be short for 'capture'. [[Film/{{Airplane}} But that's not important right now]].

See also: ScratchDamage and PinballScoring. Overflows can easily be GoodBadBugs.

----!!Video Game Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Action-Adventure Games]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* The DS ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' games have hard modes that will let you set a cap on how high your max level will reach. ''Videogame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'' is the only one that actually lets you increase it up to 255...but only after you [[BraggingRightsReward beat the game on Hard with a level cap of 1]] or [[OldSaveBonus link the game with]] ''Videogame/CastlevaniaJudgment'' .* ''VideoGame/{{Boktai}}'' infamously had very high item caps. You could carry 99 of each individual type of item, and having 8 different kinds of health-replenishing apples ''alone'' that were handed out in ludicrous quantities for good ratings in levels (often as many as ''20'' apples at a time), it meant it was almost impossible to die (it was ''difficult'' to reach even Sol City without apples in the high 80s). Later games amended this by having not only limited inventory space but also items that could spoil in time to prevent hoarding the good ones.* ''VideoGame/DeadlyTowers'' has a money cap of 250 Ludder, which is annoying since one important item costs 232 Ludder.* In the often forgotten port of ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'' for the Master System your counter for specials maxes out at 999 but once you hit this cap it doesn't decrease, which would make it a GameBreaker if it wasn't NintendoHard by the latter levels.* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'' had a money cap at 255, with no opportunity to increase it. Later games in the series had {{Wallet Upgrade}}s.** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'', the banker in Clock Town will hold on to your Rupees so you can have more available than your wallet can carry. But once you go over 5,000 Rupees, he himself will refuse to hold any more. If the player has a full wallet and 4,999 Rupees in the bank, he'll take whatever you give him but no more.* In ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest'', once you earn 255 buckazoids on the Rocket Bar's slot machine, it breaks to prevent overflow.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Action Games]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* ''VideoGame/BloodlineChampions'' has a maximum amount of health that a bloodline can regenerate from healing abilities. If their health goes below that, it cannot be regained aside from using the impractical-near-opponents [[HealThyself Bloodline Medallion]].* ''VideoGame/{{Chantelise}}'': HP is capped at 999, and Pix is capped at 9,999,999. The amount of time played is also capped at 99:99:99, at which point it will roll over to 0:00:00.* ''VideoGame/TheGuardianLegend'' has an extreme example of this. Older versions of the game will '''crash''' if you max out the score. This is especially bad, since the game gives you [[EveryTenThousandPoints life-increase bonuses when you reach certain plateaus.]]* In ''VideoGame/MidnightResistance'', players' ammo is capped at 999 for their primary weapon and 99 for their secondary weapon, and they can carry no more than six keys.[[/folder]]

[[folder: Beat Em Ups ]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* The arcade ''VideoGame/BadDudes'' capped your score at 999,990.** As did nearly every other Creator/DataEast game of that era; it was just really easy with ''Bad Dudes'' (pretty much guaranteed if you played all the way through 1-player). It was possible in ''VideoGame/SlySpy'' if you were willing to spend some time blowing up respawning mines.* ''VideoGame/{{Exolon}}'' caps the player's ammo at 99 and grenades at 10.* The ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'' UsefulNotes/ArcadeGame capped at 999,900. However, because the score reset when you continued, this was only possible if you...er, found some method of not running out of time, then killed tons of river monsters (the only respawning enemies in the game).* In ''VideoGame/PhantomBreaker: Battlegrounds'', characters' levels are initially capped at 50. With the release of DLC that added Kurisu Makise from ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'' as a GuestFighter, the cap is raised to 99, allowing the player to fully maximize their characters' stat points.* The ''VideoGame/StreetsOfRage'' games cap the score at 999,999 and the lives at 9. While additional lives are counted (and ''Streets of Rage 3'' turned the '*' symbol into a '>' symbol when this happened), the score is truly capped. While you can't score enough on the original ''Streets of Rage'' to hit the cap, it is possible to hit 999,999 points on ''Streets of Rage 2'' when playing on Hardest or Mania.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Driving Games]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* In ''VideoGame/{{Carmageddon}}'' the checkpoint timer cannot go above 19:59 on the HUD no matter how many +time powerups you pick up, but continues to increase in the background.* ''VideoGame/FZero GX'' has a record time cap: if you get a low enough time on a course, it will not have an internet ranking password for it; i.e., Big Blue Ordeal won't give you a password if your time is under 1'20". How are such times possible? You [[GameBreaker exploit hidden checkpoints to trick the game into thinking you're going all the way around the course when in fact you're just going circles around the finish line.]]* In ''VideoGame/GranTurismo 3'', there's a glitch where if you do a wheelie with a tuned-up Escudo, the speedometer jumps to 2147483647 and locks up the game.** Then there's ''GT5'', which has a money cap maximum of 20,000,000 credits--compared to previous iterations when you could have as much as hundreds of millions of credits.** In a similar way, in ''Gran Turismo 2'' you can't have more than 100 cars, which ruins the "GottaCatchEmAll" self-imposed challenge.* ''VideoGame/InitialDArcadeStage'' has a points cap of 16,777,215. A bug in the early version of ID:AS Ver.2 only protected against an underflow for 1,000-point losses in Bunta Challenge mode, and if the player lost 2,000 points at once, the counter could roll under and loop around to 16.77 million.** More a BraggingRightsReward than anything, since you only needed 900,000 points for full tune. And of course, since the requisite is beating the first 10 levels of Bunta Challenge, it's safe to say that a lot of players ended up spending ''more'' money than they would've reaching full tune honestly.* ''VideoGame/MarioKart64'': It might seem counterintuitive for a racing game, but going slowly in a TimeTrial will result in you hitting the time cap. The game's engine will not count any higher than ninety-nine minutes, fifty-nine-point-ninety-nine seconds (although subsequent lap times are still counted).** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioKart'' capped your time at 10 minutes and stopped moving after that.*** ''VideoGame/MarioKart Wii'' loops the timer after a while, allowing you to get insane times by waiting a few days with your Wii on and crossing the line finish ''just'' as it passes 0.* ''VideoGame/TokyoXtremeRacer Zero'' caps your speed at 263 mph. ''Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3'' caps your money at 99,999,990 credits. Then there's a boss that, thanks to the developers not adjusting its money requirement for the US version, requires more money than this cap, making her [[GameBreakingBug impossible to challenge]]. Since she, along with the rest of the first 599 opponents, must be defeated to face the GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere FinalBoss, the game is [[UnwinnableByMistake Unwinnable]] without cheating.* ''VideoGame/WanganMidnight'' Maximum Tune 2 has you collect a star for every opponent for defeat in versus mode. The stars cap out at 3,999. Interestingly, once you're over 2,000 stars, a fourth-place finish in a four-player battle will ''remove'' a star.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fighting Games]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom2'' has an arbitrary 50-hit limit for combos, meaning that if you reach that hitcount, your opponent will be flung high into the air, invincible to your attacks until they get back up again. Suffice to say, tournament players quickly found ways to [[GoodBadBugs break that limit]].** ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcomInfinite'' has a similar limitation on performing 20 light punches in a single combo (even if both characters participate). When that happens the engine throws the opponent into a vertical tailspin and out of harm's way.* ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' always has some way of capping a combo after a certain amount of hits, usually by knocking the player back as the last viable hit lands. It isn't perfect, though, as only certain attacks trigger it, and only if done almost immediately after the last one landed, meaning if one times it right, they can get into some crazy infinite combos. ''VideoGame/MortalKombat4'', though, subverts this by allowing the player to remove the cap (called the "Maximum Damage" in-game).* The ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series sets the damage cap at 999%. If you haven't already gone flying offscreen by ''that'' point, you certainly will now.** That said, the game calculates the knockback caused by an attack before it sets your damage back to 999%. So you can have more than 999% damage, if only for a sixtieth of a second.** The Super Scope in ''Melee'' can be abused to generate [[http://www.ssbwiki.com/Infinite_Super_Scope_Glitch an infinite amount of ammo]], which is most likely due to an overflow.** In the 3DS and Wii U games you can only make up to [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters 89 Mii Fighters]].[[/folder]]

[[folder:First-Person Shooter]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'' suffers for not having a money cap. The amount of money you are carrying is listed as a 7-digit number, but you can carry much, much more, especially if you're playing the General Knoxx [=DLC=], where you can find VendorTrash that sells for millions. However, if you exceed $2,147,483,647 in your wallet, a glitch called "Cash Overflow" happens, where any further money collected will make the counter spin like mad and dying will make you lose '''''ALL''''' of your money. It messes up your [[BraggingRightsReward challenges]] as well.* ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps2'' multiplayer mode caps individual scoring [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urmpGPN_ldA at 30,000 points]].* ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' allows you a maximum of 5 Mega Missiles (10 in ''Descent II''), but you can only retrieve 3 after you die.* Doom I and II editors can support custom monsters with a maximum HP of 2,147,483,647. If a map creator actually puts a monster with that much health in their WAD, [[TrollingCreator well...]][[/folder]]

[[folder: Four X]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* In early ''Videogame/{{Civilization}}'' games, Gandhi had the lowest aggression rating (1 out of 10). However, a late-game type of government (Democracy) reduces the AI's aggressiveness by 2, resulting in Gandhi's aggressiveness "dropping" to [[ReadingsAreOffTheScale 255 out of 10]], turning the otherwise friendly Gandhi into a bloodthirsty nuke-happy OmnicidalManiac. Became an AscendedGlitch in later games; ''Civilization V'' has Gandhi's "Use of Nukes" fixed at [[UpToEleven 12 out of 10]], he's friendly until you [[MartialPacifist piss him off, at which point he will go berserk]].[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hack and Slash]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* ''VideoGame/TheKingOfDragons'' for the SNES has a lives cheat which gets one 99 lives by taking advantage of the combined life pool. A single player would use up the standard allotment until only one life remained. While the continue counted down, a second player would join, using the remaining life credit. The first player would then choose to continue, causing the life credits to wraparound from 0 to 99.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Idle Games]]%%%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%%%* ''VideoGame/CrushCrush'':** The levels of hobbies is capped at 75.** Reset Boosts can't go higher than 2048.* ''VideoGame/SandcastleBuilder'':** Maximum finite value for anything is 1.7976931348623157e+308 - anything higher causes the value to become Infinite. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hdFG2GcNuA This is a feature of 64-bit floating-point notation.]]** Production Control can't be upgraded past 6e+51 at which point the player is awarded the "Nope!" badge.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Light Gun Games]]%%%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%%%* In ''VideoGame/TimeCrisis 2'', your combo is capped at 99 hits. ''Time Crisis 3'' lets you get into the triple digits, and it is possible in ''Time Crisis 4'''s Stage 1 Area 2 to have 999 hits.* ''VideoGame/VirtuaCop 3'' has a score cap of 99,999,999. A combination of building up your score multiplier and using [[BulletTime Exceeding Sense]] to {{Shoot The Bullet}}s for [[ScoreMilking massive points]] can make reaching this score very much possible by the end of the game.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Maze Games]]%%%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%%%* The ''VideoGame/PacMan'' arcade machine has a maximum number of levels of 255, imposing an unintended score cap of 3,333,360. On the 256th level the variable rolls over, causing the game to believe it is at level zero, which it does not know how to handle. This glitched level cannot be beaten as almost half of the dots needed to complete the level are missing. Getting the max score entails eating every ghost with every power pellet (until the ghosts stop turning blue), and eating every fruit for each level. Then you need to have 5 lives (another cap) going into this level, and collect all 9 dots on the right side with each life (unlike non-glitched dots, these ones regenerate each time Pac-Man dies).[[/folder]]

[[folder:MMORPGs]]%%%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%%%* ''VideoGame/AnarchyOnline'' has a number of different caps, most related to damage.** The first cap is in relation to damage done, unless the attack is a Full Auto attack from a ranged weapon, all damage caps at 13,000 points of damage done (though it's been theorized that Agents can hit for about 1 million points of damage without this cap), regardless of whether it's a normal attack or a special attack. Full Auto attacks cap at 15,000 damage (though skilled Soldiers could probably throw out 200k Full Autos without the cap).** The second cap applied is to [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] damage, of which there are 2 caps: The first cap cuts all damage by 50% incoming for pvp, so hitting another player for 1,000 points of damage requires having dealt out 2,000 damage before hand...** A final cap which limits the total amount of damage one single attack can do is limited to no more than 30% of the targeted player's maximum hit points. Considering the usually high amounts of damage flying around in the game, seeing 'capped hits' is more common than you think.** Another cap comes into play when it comes to gaining experience points: You can only gain experience up to a maximum of one-tenth of the amount you need to level, and with the release of Lost Eden, this also applies to the experience put into research. This makes for interesting strategies applied by players to avoid experience loss as much as possible, since all xp beyond the cap is lost.* About 18 months after the game was first released, ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' capped the number of enemies you could "aggro" (hold the attention of) at once. Although this seems purely beneficial, the cap was still well above what the [[FragileSpeedster more delicate]] [[AnAdventurerIsYou character types]] could withstand, so the actual purpose was to keep the [[MightyGlacier tankers]] from being able to lure obscene amounts of critters into a confined space for easy disposal.** Speaking of ''City of...'', while the individual characters have caps on how much buffing will affect them (example, a Brute cannot deal more than 850% base damage with an attack), the individual damage dealt isn't capped. This was proved when a bugged power was dealing 10x the target's hit points in damage. The game had to switch to using scientific notation to express the damage dealt.** There's also a cap for how much damage a player can take in one hit. Assuming you start off with full hp, NOTHING can kill you in one hit. You can be brought down to 1 hp, after which anything can kill you, but not killed in one attack.** There's also a limit of 2 billion influence (currency). This is arbitrary, but the integer limit is just over 2 billion (see the World of Warcraft example below), so the devs decided to just cap it at a nice, round even number.* ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' has a system called "Favor of the Gods," which is tied to [[BraggingRightsReward several maxed titles]]. A recent weekend event that made it easy to max out two of those titles pushed the amount of favor well beyond the cap, presumed to be 2^31 milliseconds (about 35,791 minutes). (To put into perspective how much favor was accumulated that weekend: it nearly reached the cap AGAIN.)** And then there is the wallet cap of 100,000 gold on your character. Trading large quantities of expensive items requires multiple trips to the storage chests for both parties (luckily you can trade standing next to said chests) . Trading for a single item worth more than 100,000 gold is usually done by using a rare crafting material as currency, or the buying party giving the seller his rare customized armor (which the seller can't use or sell for much, but would be very expensive for the buyer to replace) while he pays the amount in several increments, with the armor returned with the last payment.* The online game ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' had an infamous example where the problem of poorly capped GlobalCurrency resulted in the massive bug known as "Black Sunday". An item called the Meat Vortex could steal meat (your currency in this game) from enemies in combat, but it lowered the amount of meat you had if used any other time. If you had 0 meat, using a meat vortex from your inventory caused the value to roll under, thus placing you at the maximum possible integer amount of meat, which at the time was 2^64-1, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. This hosed the game's economy for several months, but was eventually mostly fixed through currency sinks. The cap itself has also been lowered to 2^32-1, or 4,294,967,295.* ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' originally put the cap on mesos (the game's currency) at 2,147,483,647; the cap has since been raised to 9,999,999,999. Many player-sold items cost [[UpToEleven even more than that]], necessitating real-money trades. Meanwhile, the original damage cap was 199,999; the current cap is 50,000,000, and with certain modifiers, it's possible to reach 110,000,000 damage as a certain class. This causes an interesting shift in utilities for classes, as some classes that are generally considered to be weak will turn out to out perform "strong classes" in a setting where both have achieved capped damage.* ''VideoGame/RuneScape'' has a strict item stack limit of 2147483647 due to programming. It's impossible to have a stack of items higher than that; you'll simply get a message that it cannot be done if you try. There's still ways around this though, you can have more then one stack of items by storing them in separate places so the stacks don't attempt to automatically combine. A player could theoretically store a stack of 2147483647 coins in their bank, their inventory, coin pouch and house at once, giving them 8589934588 coins in total, well above the "limit".* In ''VideoGame/UltimaOnline'', getting your weight over 65,535 will result in it rolling over to 0 again, allowing you to move absolutely massive piles of materials. Though realistically only a huge pile of ore could so encumber a player. Also stacks of items over 65,535 had the same bug, including gold. In a game where the average person could earn 10,000 gold an hour.* For Free-to-Play players of ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsOnline'', the cap on currency is 2 gold pieces (most items in this game cost silver, and 1 gold = 1,000 silver). Buying a quest pack makes one a premium player and raises the cap to 5 gold. Removing the currency cap entirely (either by buying the privilege with Turbine Points or getting a subscription) brings the cap to 9,999 gold, 999 silver and 99 copper.* A German ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' player reached the cap of 214,748 gold, that is, 2,147,483,646 copper coins (that's 2^31-2). ''Cataclysm'' raises the cap to 999,999 gold; larger amounts can be stored using multiple characters.** This number is faster achieved through the Statistics system. Basically, if you buy an item for 1,000 and resell it for 1,200, you've earned 200, but the system records 1,200 "obtained" gold. When the limit is achieved, the number loops to negative and grows back to positive.** There are many other caps as well, the most obvious being the level cap. Honor points (which are currency for PvP items) also have a cap, which is particularly low, and many other items that serve as currency are also capped. Another cap: You can only create 10 characters on the same server, and have a total of 50 characters in your account.** Also notable are the character stats, most of which have their cap defined as the point where getting the stat higher is entirely pointless. You can't have more than a 100% chance to hit, after all (although excess can still be useful if the character is affected by a status effect lowing hit chance). Similarly, no matter how much haste you stack, you can't reduce the global cooldown below one second, and many stats (like dodge and parry) have a "soft cap" or diminishing returns beyond which they become less effective.** The damage cap, which has only been reached by exploiting glitches, is 2^29, or 536,870,912.* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' had most items stack at a maximum of 99. If you gained more of the same item, it would start a new stack, thus taking up more space in your inventory. Patch 4.2 changed the item stacking cap to 999. Damage caps out at 99,990, but that's only achieved by boss characters whenever you fail a mechanic or let the boss hit its enrage.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Party]]* ''VideoGame/MarioParty'' games cap the number of coins a character (or team later) can hold at 999. It's easy to reach this in Mario Party 3 with [[BettingMiniGame Game Guy mini-games]] which can give you up to 64 times what you wagered, but even if you win thousands of coins you can only keep 999.* ''VideoGame/PacMan Fever'' has a few games where it's possible to score higher than 999, most notably Vend-A-Fruit. Interestingly enough, while the game can recognize scores higher than 999 (and will place them accordingly), they'll all show as 999 on the high score table.* In ''VideoGame/SuperMonkeyBall Banana Blitz'', the highest possible score in the Number Ball mini-game is 9,800. The game crashes the instant you hit 9,900.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Platformers]]* ''VideoGame/{{HERO}}'' has a score cap of 999,999. When you hit the limit, it replaces the score display with "!!!!!!!!!!!!". It records no further change in score even if you run out of lives and start a new game (keeping the score at 0.)* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'':** The 2-D ''SuperMarioBros'' games cap typically the number of extra lives you can have at 99. You might collect a hundred thousand {{One Up}}s beyond that (easily, in ''Super Mario World''), but the moment you die, you're back to 98.** The original ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' has a maximum of 127 lives, due to the fact that the life counter is a signed byte. Going over 127 lives results in having ''negative'' lives, and thus getting game over the next time you die. Making matters worse is the fact that the life counter is only designed to display up to 20 lives, and getting any more than that causes your life count to be represented by random letters, punctuation symbols, and/or graphical tiles. Normally this isn't such a problem, considering you'd never get so many lives through normal gameplay, except through abusing glitches. However, collecting as many lives as possible becomes pretty much mandatory in ''[[VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels The Lost Levels]]'', because you're going to need every single one, and the first level in the game has a great opportunity for abusing the extra life trick.*** The ''[[VideoGame/SuperMarioAllStars All-Stars]]'' remake fixes it so the counter can now display the number 127, and can no longer overflow into negative numbers.*** ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros2'', ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand'' and ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DWorld'' reference Super Mario Bros' glitch lives counter with their cap of 1110 lives: as the lives counter only has three digits, when the lives counter overflows, the games use a crown to represent 10 the way SMB did (for a maximum cap of "crown crown crown" lives)** The original ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' caps at 254 ("FE"). This is pretty easy to get if you are at least decent with the slot machine (and ridiculously easy if you also use the unlimited coins glitch).*** It also doesn't help that the lives counter is only displayed between stages or just after losing a life, so anyone using an infinite lives trick has to track the lives gained independently of the game interface anyway.** In all ''New Super Mario Bros.'' except the first one, as well as ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand'', Mario and Luigi [[StealthPun lose their cap]] when they reach the max life count.** The ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry'' series, by contrast, only caps the amount of lives ''displayed'' at 99. Collecting more will result in your lives counter remaining at 99, but the extras will still count. Presumably there's a "true" cap on lives, but it's hard to say what it is.** In ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros2'', Coin Rush mode has a score cap of 30,000 coins. At least [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScNldvhodec one player]] had already achieved this within 3 days of the game's release in Japan - before the game had even been released anywhere else.*** The main coin counter caps at 9,999,999 coins, and surprisingly enough, you get a change in title screen and message if you manage to somehow reach that.* Each player in ''VideoGame/ToejamAndEarl'' can have up to nine lives. For ''Panic on Funkotron'', each player can share up to seven (likely as a result of extra lives being much easier to obtain in the sequel).** Much like the ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' life counter, the display for bucks for the original ''VideoGame/ToejamAndEarl'' game is also a signed byte. Going over 127 means you will have ''negative'' bucks.* In an example of poor design, ''VideoGame/AladdinVirginGames'' caps your score at 99,990 points. The testers failed to take into account that a regular playthrough will hit this cap slightly after the first half of the game.* ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures'' has an inventory cap on a few items:** The cap on Scarabs (the currency) that increases three times over the course of the game, from 10, to 50, to 100, to 200.** Tricky has 5 [=GrubTubs'=] worth of energy, and Fox can carry up to 15 around with him to feed Tricky as needed, for a total of... 19 (because even though it only consumes one [=GrubTub=] of energy for him to perform a skill, he needs at least two within him to perform.** Fox can carry up to 7 Bomb Spores.** He may only carry 1 [=BaFomDad=] (read: OneUp) until he buys a holder which increases the capacity to 10. Instead of pseudo-collection like with most capped items, however, he just passes through it when he can't carry any more. He may collect it later as needed... [[MeaninglessLives if that situation ever arises.]]* In the old SonicTheHedgehog games, the time is capped at 9 minutes and 59 seconds, with the added caveat that you die if you reach that time.* In a weird aversion, in some of the games your extra life counter only goes up to 9, however it is possible to have more than 9 extra lives.** In the first act of ''[[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles Sonic the Hedgehog 3]]'''s Launch Base Zone, there is a way to summon an infinite series of robots and destroy them almost instantly. Do this until you run out of time several times, and you will have the maximum score and a LOT of lives (more than 200). Here's how to do it: [[spoiler:There's an alarm near the beginning of a level that summons a flying robot. If you do a power up for a spin dash and don't release down, the robot will fly into you and be destroyed--and another will be summoned. When you destroy several monsters in succession, the score you gain goes up: 100 for the first, 200, then 500, then 1,000. After about a 14 monsters, the score goes up to a cap of 10,000 and you get a new life [[EveryTenThousandPoints every 50,000 points]]). There is a life cap and a score cap, and eventually you'll reach one of them.]]** In ''VideoGame/Sonic3DFlickiesIsland'', you cannot have more than 9 lives at a time. The SonicAdvanceTrilogy has a variation of this, as the life counter only displays "9", though you can get more than 9 lives.*** The original release of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD'' also has a counter that tops out at nine, but excess lives could be kept in escrow.** ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'' has a point cap of 99,999 and a life cap of 99. Score can (theoretically) reach 6 digits, but getting an S rank in a stage usually means you've obtained a score of around 50,000. Therefore, it's highly unlikely (if not impossible) to break 6 digits.** In ''VideoGame/KnucklesChaotix'', the most rings you can get in a level is 255. Anything beyond that gives you 4,000 points a ring. Also, the most rings you can take into a special stage is 200.* In the original arcade version of ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong'', the score rolls over to zero at 1 million points. This is almost, but not quite, impossible to reach, due to both the high difficulty of the game and the KillScreen which ends the game at level 22. Only three such scores are recorded on Twin Galaxies. The level counter is also capped at 99, though the aforementioned KillScreen does prevent anyone from seeing this. The KillScreen itself is due to cap problems -- the time limit is supposed to increase with every stage, capped at 8,000, but this cap is only applied at the very end of the calculation, which means that the time limit for level 22 rolls over to an impossibly-low 400 before the game thinks to check anything.* ''VideoGame/{{Kirby}}'s Dreamland 2'' had a score cap of 9,999,990, which is possible to reach within a week or so of playing (because the score is kept unless you game over). Once you reach the cap though, anything that would add points would simply convert into one-ups, with the sound. As cool as this may seem, as you'll never worry about dying, the sound will get old after five minutes.* ''VideoGame/RainbowIslands'' has a score cap of 9,999,990 points, unless you enter a code at the title screen which increases this cap to 99,999,990 points.* The ''VideoGame/WarioLand'' games have various caps. Notably, in [[VideoGame/WarioLand4 the fourth game]], the coin counter maxes out at 999,990. Since all the coins and crystals in the game come multiples of ten, it's clear that [[PinballScoring the extra zero is only there to give Wario's adventure more worth]].* ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'' has caps for how many items you can hold in a slot, and it depends on the item. Blocks and Ammunition have the highest cap of 999. * ''VideoGame/LaMulana'' has caps on how many of each subweapon you can carry. The limit is 255 shurikens and 128 each of most others.* ''VideoGame/TheFairylandStory'' counter-stops at 9,999,990 points, which can be achieved by creative score milking strategies.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Puzzle Games]]* The ''VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster'' series has a unique kind of level cap. You gain 1 level every time you drop a piece or clear a line, but once you are one level below a multiple of 100 or level 999 (the last level), your level stops increasing until you clear a line. This seems useful at first, but causes you to waste time if you're going for a time-sensitive rank, or if the mode you're in has a ''torikan'' (a checkpoint that, if reached too slowly, yields a NonstandardGameOver).* The ''Panel De Pon''/''Tetris Attack''/''Puzzle League'' games allow you to actually ''set'' the cap, at either 99,999 or 999,999 points.** The original only had the 99,999-point cap. Hitting it in Endless mode gave you different music on the results screen.*** There is also a sort of cap on chains in the first game; chains are handled properly up to x13, but after that, additional hits are displayed as x? and don't award points. Similarly, combos are only displayed properly up to 30, with larger combos simply displayed as 30.* ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}} Friends'' in Arena Mode caps players' ratings at 19,999. The reason for this strange number seems to stem from the game's ratings-based ranks. A new rank is awarded every 1,000 points (so players with a 0-999 rating are "Newbies", 1,000-1,999 are "Novices", etc.), and it appears they simply ran out of rank names. Of course, the ratings are moot anyways since the entire Top 100 leaderboard is tied at 19,999, due to the ability to prevent ratings decreases entirely via BribingYourWayToVictory.* The {{UsefulNotes/NES}} and UsefulNotes/GameBoy versions of ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' cap score at 999,999 points. The former has no caps on anything else, really. If you clear 1,000 lines, it will be displayed as A00, then B00, etc. Past "Z99" lines will make the game start using random symbols for the hundreds digit. Same goes with the counters for each piece. These counters will loop back around to 000 after clearing 25,600 lines or getting that many of a piece. The level counter will start to cycle through a pseudo-random sequences of two hexadecimal digits after level 30. The game also starts to break pretty horribly after that, requiring you to pause and resume to keep the game going. The level counter will go back to 00 after 256 levels.** ''Tetris DX'' (the GBC version) caps score at 9,999,999 points.* ''Tetris DS'' can display a maximum of 99,999,999 points. If you exceed this amount, it will display that maximum, but your score won't be saved.** The line and level counters will cap at 999; you'll reach the cap on those a very long time before you reach the score cap.* The max score in ''{{VideoGame/Bookworm}}'' is 2.14 billion according to Creator/PopCap.* A man has essentially ''[[http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/30/man-beats-bejeweled-2-after-playing-for-3-years/ beaten Bejeweled 2]]'' by exceeding [[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 2,147,483,647 (2^31-1)]] points, causing the score display to go blank.* The first ''VideoGame/PuzzleBobble'' game has a cap on the bonus that is given for dropping bubbles, 1310720 (2^17 * 10) points which is gotten by dropping 17 or more bubbles. The sequels have a cap of 10485760 (2^20 * 10) points which can be gotten by dropping 20 or more bubbles, with the caveat that unless exactly three bubbles were matched for the drop, the bonus is capped at 1310720.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real-Time Strategy]]* The second ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' game had a unit editor. The maximum damage dealt by a unit and hit points possessed by a unit were 255 and 65,535, respectively.* ''VideoGame/PopulousTheBeginning'' had a tribe size limit of 200 (or more often 199) pushing it to far above this (using an the hypnotism spell exploit) would make the game unstable.* ''VideoGame/TheOregonTrail'' let you go hunting in the wilds to replenish your wagon's food. However, you could only carry 100 pounds of meat back to the wagon. So there was never a good reason to shoot more than one buffalo, or, in fact, anything except buffalo and large animals - why waste the bullets? Also, the total limit of all food was about 2,000 pounds.** There are caps on any item in your inventory. 20 oxen, 50 sets of clothing, 1980 bullets (99 boxes of 20), 3 of each spare wagon part, and 2,000 pounds of food.* ''VideoGame/TheAncientArtOfWar'' had a cap to how many units total could be visible on the map at any time, ''total'' - not per side. You could group troops into units. This allowed for a strategy of making many weak units to force the computer to create stronger units - but fewer and thus easier for the player to avoid.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Rhythm Games]]* ''VideoGame/EightBeatStory'':** The number of Energy Blues that can be held on a player is limited at 100 per type.** The number of event items that can be held on a player is limited at 30,000.* You can hold up to 9,999 coins in ''VideoGame/RhythmHeaven Megamix''.* Many of the Endless modes in the console versions of ''VideoGame/DanceDanceRevolution'' have caps that can be reached in a "reasonable" amount of play. In particular, the system used in X and X2 caps at 9,999,999,999,999 points, at which point the player's run ends. In 4thMIX the cap is at 10^32 - 1, while in 3rdMIX the cap is 10^72 - 1.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Roguelike]]* A lot of the strategy in ''VideoGame/{{Angband}}'' involves managing inventory slots, which are capped at a paltry 22. Late in the game, players usually stop collecting loot from the dungeon (unique items excepted) so that they can have a full "kit" of offensive and defensive items. There is also a level cap of 50.* ''VideoGame/NetHack'''s developers missed one - the score caps out at 2^31-1 (=2,147,483,647 - lousy four-byte signed integers). That score's been achieved a couple of times, as has an overflow score of -2,147,474,899.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]%%%%%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!%%%%* One of the key contributing factors to the notorious difficulty of ''VideoGame/The7thSaga'' is the cap of 9 for any item in your inventory. It makes {{heal|Thyself}}ing rather difficult -- which is mind-boggling in a game that also gives you an infinite-use health restoration item.* ''VideoGame/AVeryLongRopeToTheTopOfTheSky'': There's an item stack cap of 99, and a level cap of 99.* ''VideoGame/BraveHeroYuusha'': Item stacks are capped at 15 items.* ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' has the standard ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' damage cap of 9,999. This is actually kind of a problem in the late game, making a lot of the higher-powered abilities less udeful than they should be. You can get around it with Bravely Second, but that's not really a viable strategy without [[BribingYourWayToVictory spending a lot of money]] (and vaguely cheating).* In the original ''[[VideoGame/TheBardsTaleTrilogy The Bard's Tale]]'', the XP reward per battle was capped at 65,535. There was a repeatable fixed low-risk battle (the barracks in Harkyn's Castle) which achieved this limit, making Level Grinding a particularly trivial task.* The caps in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' are a bit of an oddball compared to other Creator/{{Square|Enix}}-made {{Role Playing Game}}s. The heroes' HP and MP cap at 999 and 99, respectively, one-tenth of the values ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' heroes have. However the heroes still deal damage comparable to Franchise/FinalFantasy heroes, and their damage cap is 9,999 (Ayla's [[InfinityPlusOneSword strongest fists]] hit this cap with every critical). Meanwhile, the enemies that deal 700 damage on a strike are genuinely terrifying.* In ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'', all attributes and all skills have a natural cap of 100. Thanks to Fortification spells and potions, however, this number could be increased above 100 for extended periods. Through a potion Fortification stacking trick, one could cause overflow errors (e.g., Fortifying STR and attacking something) and freeze the game.** This is true of ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' as well, but with console commands (presumably in either game) one can explore the true limits of character stats. For attributes and skills it's 255, for mana it's a complex 60,000-ish number. (Note that this only applies to the ''natural'' limits; with the aforementioned fortification spells, a person could bring their stats into the thousands. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBY6mlvB9B4 See it here.]])*** The stats and skills may exceed the cap in numbers, but the effects of them are capped at 100 from within the engine, so even modders can't break the effective 100-limit. The exceptions are Athletics and Acrobatics; the player can run faster and jump higher up to the 255-limit.*** While in game spells don't get any stronger, increasing your skill past 100 continues to make them cheaper to cast.*** That, however, is ''not'' true of Morrowind. The other skills do not have their effects capped at 100 (though the effect can often be hard to note), and you can jump much, much farther with acrobatics boosted to 1100 than you can with acrobatics boosted to 600.** Being a vampire should let you increase your skills beyond 100, but due to a bug you can't level up your skills if they hit 100 or higher from the vampirism-given skill bonuses.** Use of console commands in Morrowind lets a player set the skill levels to whatever they want. Especially hilarious is the continent-spanning jumps that come with a 9,000 Acrobatics score.** In ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', all skills are capped at 100, although they can be fortified with equipment or potions above this.*** The skill cap initially created a level cap of 81. The level cap was removed with the ability to mark a skill as legendary (resetting it to the base of 15 and refunded your perks) allowing you to progress further and eventually claim every single perk. *** The physical damage reduction cap for armour is 80%, or 567 armor rating. Going above this cap has no more effect on damage reduction, [[GuideDangIt although higher armor ratings will still display as if they were actually doing something]].* ''Franchise/DragonAge'':** ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' has, beside the usual inventory caps, a cap that says you can only have ten different characters saved at any time, though you can have multiple saves with each character. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you got achievements/trophies for playing through each of the six openings, and that playing each of the expansions counted as making a new character, even if you imported your old one from the main game.** The level cap is 25 for the main game, and 35 for ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening'', although you'd have to do pretty much every quest to get that high of a level.** ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'' has a level cap of 50, but if you do everything, [[AbsurdlyHighLevelCap you'd be somewhere around halfway there]].** ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' also caps the level of the title organization at 20, which is easily reachable in a single playthrough (especially if you convert gold into influence at the "favor merchant's" stand in Skyhold).* The level cap for the original ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'' was 30, which you would reach at 65,535(16 bits) EXP, with 255(8 bits) for the stats. In VideoGame/DragonQuestII the EXP cap was raised to 1,000,000 for each character, but they had different experience tables resulting in level caps of 50, 40, and 35. In VideoGame/DragonQuestIII the maximum level for any class is the standard 99 and EXP caps somewhere over 9 million (most likely either 9,999,999 or 24 bits). Every game after this uses a level cap of 99 save for a few recruitable monsters.* Each game in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series has various caps, but SPECIAL stats always cap at 10:** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'': The level cap is 21 (fairly realistic and requires minimal LevelGrinding), skills cap at 200, and radiation resistance caps at 100% ([[BonusDungeon The Glow]] ''needs'' total resistance or else you'll die as soon as you walk out).** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'': The level cap is 99 (nigh-impossible to attain since the final level requires 4,851,000 XP), skills cap at 300 (needs either ''months'' of non-stop LevelGrinding or a LethalJokeItem you get after beating the game), and radiation resistance caps at 95% (there are so few radiation sources in the game that you can't die from it without actively trying).** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'': The level cap is 20 in base game (30 with the ''Broken Steel'' DLC), skills cap at 100, and radiation and damage resistances both cap at 85%.** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'': The level cap is 30 in the base game (plus an extra 5 levels with each of the four DLC, for a new cap of 50), skills cap at 100, and radiation and poison resistances cap at 85%.** Similar to ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' before it, ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' has no "official" level cap but level 278 allows Nate/Nora to max out all of their perks and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes. Additionally, the game crashes if you go over Level 65,535 (nigh impossible outside of console commands). Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes cap at 10 per series tradition but can be boosted to 11 if you got the Vault-Tec Bobbleheads and further boosted with chems, food, and clothes. Perks have a cap on how many times they can be upgraded usually to rank 2 to 5 but it also related to the appropriate S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute. * In ''VideoGame/{{Faria}}'', the player character's level maxes out at 30, and hit points, ammo and magic stats are all capped at 250.* Many ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games have "back door" methods of exceeding the damage cap (typically 9,999) by hitting twice or more in one turn. In some games it's as simple as DualWielding, while others go well beyond that.** 'VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' is supposed to have a cap of 99 on core stats, but the orbs at the top of Mysidia Tower award 10 points to a stat, not checking if the bonus would cause the stat to go over 99. Stats of 100 or more are displayed with the first "digit" as "A"; 109 would be displayed as "A9".*** Max HP is 9,999, and max MP is 999. The levels for magic spells and weapon proficiencies max at 16. Strangely, you can fill the progress bar again at level 16, but the level won't increase anymore, and there isn't any notable difference between level 16 with an empty bar and level 16 with a full bar.** Interestingly, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'', at least the DS version, doesn't actually have a damage cap. While it won't show you any more damage over 9,999, you'll still '''do''' more damage.** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' is unique among the SNES games in that it allows items to stack; while each stack can't contain more than 99 items, you can have more than one stack of that item (but it would take up another slot in your limited inventory).*** The [[UpdatedRerelease DS remake]] has an augment called Limit Break (not to be confused with the more common type of LimitBreak) that increases a character's damage cap from 9,999 to 99,999.** If a character in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is tweaked obsessively enough, their ability to deal damage can go so far over the damage cap (9,999) that it would run into the variable's overflow limit and wrap back around to low damage. This can lead to somewhat ridiculous situations where a low-level fire spell invokes the 9,999 damage cap, but spells like Ultima or Merton only do 100-200 damage.*** It's also possible for certain stats to go past 255 and wrap around to 0. This makes a character that was previously unhittable into one that cannot be missed by a monster.*** A glitch involving the Mantra blitz hits the 9,999 cap handily... by doling out ''1 divided by zero'' damage (which works out to 65,535 on the SNES ALU).*** One characters' levels get high enough, the Genji Glove (which allows DualWielding) can allow a Cap break. The Offering/Master's Scroll allows you do to four half-power hits, and the halving comes ''before'' the Cap is applied. Combine the two to get absolutely insane amounts of damage... [[AwesomeButImpractical once your level is high enough that you don't need to any more]].** A couple of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'''s ultimate weapons can overflow the damage calculations. The game will compensate by inflicting insta-death on the target enemy (even the [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]]), which means that the Death Penalty Glitch is one of the more common ways of dealing with [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ovxL1wdjtI Emerald WEAPON]].** Technically breaking the cap, in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' you can acquire a materia called HPMP, which swaps the values of the character's HP and MP. Anyone with an HP over 999 will technically break the MP limit of 999. Of course, you'd be stuck with a ridiculously low amount of HP, possibly turning the holder into a GlassCannon.*** Also, the MP ''cost'' of spells is capped to 255, as seen with the Turbo MP materia. A fully boosted Knights of the Round Table will cost 255 instead of 375 MP!*** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' also has a strange effect on percentage damage spells like Demi. Although the visual number is capped, the actual damage is not, so if used on the few powerful enemies [[ContractualBossImmunity not immune to Gravity]] (like Emerald Weapon again) it can be used to bring their HP down to a far more manageable level.** Likewise, ''VideoGame/CrisisCore'' includes equippable accessories that can be used elevate the damage and stat caps by a factor of ten (from 9,999 to 99,999 for damage and hit points, and from 999 to 9,999 for MP and AP)** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' also has a few specific attacks that can exceed the 9,999 damage cap. There are some attacks that ''do'' fall under the damage cap yet are more damaging than those that don't. This is because they can hit multiple times per turn, and it's each individual hit (not the cumulative damage from all of them) that is subject to the cap. Thus, Quistis's best attack (the Blue Magic skill Shockwave Pulsar, one hit with a theoretical maximum of 32,672 damage; while this is lower than the secondary damage cap, it's the highest that the spell's damage formula allows) is far inferior to Squall's (up to 24 hits with a theoretical maximum of 9,999 each or 239,976 total). Especially since achieving the theoretical maximum damage from Squall's ultimate attack is very doable, while for Quistis it's virtually impossible. The most powerful single-hit attack comes from the Eden [[SummonMagic summon]], which can deal up to 60,000 damage.[[note]]Due to the data storage system, this is the most damage any single attack in the game can deal. Eden's damage formula would otherwise allow for significantly higher damage than this.[[/note]]*** Impressive as that is, the king here is Zell. By repeatedly putting in the weakest commands of his Duel techniques, you can get in a long string of rapid hits. Since each of these is 2 buttons long, it's possible to put in each command in 0.10 seconds according to the game's timer which ranges from giving 2 to 12 seconds. With Zell's ultimate weapon and everything else normal, he would probably come right around or right under Squall. With an enemy under the effects of Meltdown (Defense reduced to 0), Zell at 255 for his strength stat and twelve seconds on the clock, he has to potential to hit in the lower 700,000s. Give or take 200,000 to account for the possible critical hits. This has the appropriate nick name ''Armaggedon Fist''. [[http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Duel Source.]]** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' features an exception should the player ever get a hold of (and properly upgrade) the [[InfinityPlusOneSword ultimate weapons]] for the characters. This raises the damage cap to 99,999; allowing you to kill the [[AnticlimaxBoss final boss]] in ''one hit''. Given that the caps had always had the aspect of a technological limitation, this was essentially akin to ''changing the laws of physics''.*** You can also customize normal weapons to do this, but it requires insane amounts of rare materials, and the ultimate weapons are better anyway since the user's HP boosts the damage they deal. However, you can also customize armor to break the HP/MP limits, bringing them up to 99,999 and 9,999 respectively. The optional bosses practically necessitated the HP boost.*** The BonusBoss Neslug goes beyond the second damage limit with the Regen-like status it gains while it's in its shell, healing a ''six-digit amount of HP'' on some turns. [[ThatOneBoss AAAAAARGH!!]]*** And finally, if the summon animations are turned off, Anima can do 7 digit damage with her [[LimitBreak Overdrive]] in the [[RegionalBonus International]] version of the game.*** Stats max out at 255; however, using Cheer on a character with maxed-out Strength or Defense will ''still raise those stats.''*** And even with breaking the damage cap, Penance is still a MarathonBoss of legendary proportions. 99,999 damage against its 12 ''million'' HP is a drop in the bucket.*** In an inverse example, in [[ThatOneSidequest the chocobo race sidequest]] to get the sigil for Tidus' ultimate weapon, the lowest time that is shown is capped at 0.0 seconds. This has confused and frustrated some players in that you need a time of ''less'' than zero; getting a time of exactly zero won't get you the Sun Sigil, but both are displayed as 0.0 seconds on the results screen. You could always just do the math yourself, though.*** Kimahri becomes a TierInducedScrappy in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX''. While all characters are ultimately limited by the damage cap, they can overcome the 99,999 limit by attacking more than once through overdrives. Khimari is the only one who, even with his overdrive, cannot hit more than once.** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' has only a handful of limit-breaking attacks, mostly the LimitBreak attacks for the Espers and the Concurrence attacks for the Quickenings. The strongest attack in the game, is Zeromus' Big Bang, hitting for just shy of 70,000 damage.** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' has a cap of 99,999 for single hits; Summons, Death and equipping a certain item can move the cap to 999,999 and there is an achievement for doing 6 digits in one hit. The Final Boss has close to 15 million HP so 99,999 is not all that high in perspective.*** The [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2 sequel]] generally has 99,999 cap on all forms of damage, with DLC-only Valkyrie Lightning being the only one with the skill to increase it to 999,999: thus, the max damage achievement is lowered to 99,999 points of damage and the last form of the final boss only has slightly over 1 million HP, with the {{Bonus Boss}}es maxing out at 15.5 million.** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyMysticQuest'' had a bug where the main character can cast Cure a few times on [[spoiler:the endboss, Dark King]] to increase its HP over the maximum allowable value. The enemy's HP overflows back around to -65,535, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HXVQhHnih8 killing it instantly]]. Ironically, entering the battle at a low level makes this overflow easier.** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' has a level cap on new recruits. By default, a new unit's level would match around the average level of your party, but if your party's levels get really high, a new recruit's level would cap off at 30, forcing players to level grind the new character. This was intentional so that players can't try to recruit a level 99 Assassin without doing any work for it.*** The game also has enemies with more than 999 HP, and a HP and MP display with only three digits. To get around the interface induced cap, the game shows ??? instead.** Played straight and then subverted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper'': damage performed by party members can go as high as 9,999... ''unless'' said party member is performing an Overstrike Soul Break, in which case the damage cap becomes 99,999.* The ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'' series limits you to carrying 99 of any given item. However, unlike most examples of an item quantity cap, further duplicates are not simply discarded or lost. Instead, they're automatically sold, and the game will report you gaining the sell value of the item rather than the item itself.* The various ''Infinity Engine'' games, excepting ''Icewind Dale II'', kept to a number of caps based on the Advanced ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' (2nd Edition) ruleset--for example, the maximum any ability score could reach regardless of magic items was 25, which was the absolute maximum the game allowed at the time, and then usually only by gods. In addition, there were artificial caps on the games to ensure a challenge--in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' your character could not exceed 161,000 experience points (enough to put any single-classed character to level 7 or higher, depending on class), and no game using the Infinity Engine allowed more than six permanent party members. (''Icewind Dale II'' used a modified 3rd Edition ruleset, which had far less limits on characters, but still had a level cap of 30.)** The first ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' had an XP cap of 89,000 (level 6-8, depending on class). The official expansion Tales of the Sword Coast raised it to the 161,000 mentioned above, allowing most classes to gain 1-2 more levels. There are several cap removers to be found on the 'net (one by the original dev team!), and it is trivially easy to do yourself if you know which file to edit. (xpcap.2da) This was almost useless though, as the game didn't implement any of the higher level spells or abilities.** In the first ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'', you were allowed an unlimited number of summons. In the sequel this was [[{{Nerf}} nerfed]] to a maximum of 5. That doesn't stop you from [[CharmPerson mind controlling]] an infinite number of monsters however.* In ''[[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsCoded Kingdom Hearts Re:coded]]'', the level cap is 99, Strength, Magic, and Defense caps at 200, and HP caps at 400. Also, the most Munny you can have at any time is 999,999.** Most of the games in general have a cap on how much damage you can cause per hit to bosses (Despite not using a numerical damage system), which results in the aforementioned multi-hitting move superiority.* ''Creator/Level5'' tends to inflict caps on immediately-beneficial items which are made all the jarring by the lack of caps on ''anything else in your inventory'':** In ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'', you can store 99 of anything in your warehouse, and carry up to 99 of the various materials needed for ItemCrafting or unlocking abilities, but healing items have much less forgiving limits. ** ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'' is even worse. You can carry hundreds of sacks of flour...''but only 20 loaves of bread''.* ''VideoGame/LufiaIIRiseOfTheSinistrals'': The Egg Dragon, a BonusBoss, has the largest amount of HP the game allows for. However, the developers obviously thought nobody would be silly enough to use a healing item on it, so they did not ensure that its HP could not exceed that number. As a result, you can easily defeat this boss by using a low-level healing item on it, thereby causing its HP to wrap around, then attacking it once. A pretty spectacular blunder in a game where killing bosses within a certain number of rounds would yield a nice item reward...** In [[VideoGame/LufiaTheLegendReturns the sequel]], instead of having the maximum HP at 65,535, the Egg Dragon's HP is a mere 60,000. [[AscendedGlitch The trick works anyway]].* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarI'', being an 8-bit UsefulNotes/SegaMasterSystem game, had some classic ones.** Meseta (money) capped at 65,535, easy enough to achieve late in the game when there is [[MoneyForNothing nothing left to buy]] except some occasional healing.** Levels capped at 30, which can be achieved with some LevelGrinding as a normal playthrough already takes you to 26-28 (Noah needs to be level 24 to reach the end game, due to the required 'Open' spell.)** Also, no monster had more than 255 HP, the final battle is actually implemented as [[ActuallyFourMooks two monsters]] but their HP isn't shown.* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' had a glitch that served as a rather brutal Level Cap: Any levels gained past 99 actually ''decreased'' your stats.* This is, incidentally, why hunting for the InfinityPlusOneSword in ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' is a fool's errand. By the time you've fought enough battles to qualify for the Sky Fang, Vyse should easily be capping damage with the weaker -- but easier-to-get -- Vorlik Blade, so the extra attack power is usually irrelevant.* ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' -- you can't hold more than 999 nano-gel units, and you can't hold more than 9,999,999 credits (which, toward the end of the game, you may not have that much trouble acquiring).** These limits were mostly artificial and could be surpassed on the PC by editing the INI files that came with the game. Change them to too large a value, though, and they'll roll over.* In the ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi'' series, there are a few notable caps that can be reached:** Levels cap out at level 99, which is nearly impossible to reach without massive level grinding. ** Stats (at least in the first three games) max out at 999 each, which is impossible to reach in Partners in Time and Bowser' Inside Story (but can be done with a LOT of [[RareCandy coffee]] drinking in Superstar Saga and a lot of eating beans in Dream Team.** Damage is capped out at 9,999 in the first three games. This has been raised, presumably to about 99,999 damage in Dream Team. For comparison's sakes, the former is at least double or triple the health of the final boss and the latter is about 33 times its health.* ''VideoGame/OverlordI'': The number of minions is initially capped at 5, and increases to 10, and further, via upgrades.* In the ''[[Franchise/SaGaRPG SaGa]]'' series:** Characters in ''[[VideoGame/MakaiToshiSaGa The Final Fantasy Legend]]'' have a visible HP cap of 999. However, human characters don't get HP from levels or other internal stats; they get them from buying HP-increasing items. The items themselves are at least partially capped in their effectiveness (use enough and even the most powerful variety only adds 1 HP) -- but can increase the value well over 999.** In the [[VideoGame/SaGa2 second game]], Humans and Mutants have a chance of their stats increasing at the end of battle, with that chance going up if they happened to use that particular stat in that battle (casting spells for Magic or taking damage for HP, for instance). They can't gain attributes past the cap of 999 HP or 99 Strength, Agility, Magic, or Defense, but a naked Human or Mutant could level to the cap and then put on armor or use rare stat-boosting items to break it. Robots don't level up permanently but can also break the displayed stat cap by wearing multiple copies of powerful equipment. ([[spoiler:Or by using a GoodBadBug to give them potentially infinite amounts of agility.]]) However, stats will loop around to 0 if they go over 255. And for whatever strange reason, some calculations involving agility only use the last two digits of it, so a character with 100 agility is slow as molasses. Meanwhile, ''damage'' caps are completely absent here; you can do five-digit damage long before it was possible in most {{R|olePlayingGame}}PGs if you have enough strength, agility, and the game's InfinityPlusOneSword.** ''VideoGame/{{SaGa 3}}'' just does away with trying to cap your HP (displayed as 999 if exceeded) and core stats (which still actually cap at 255 but only display as 99 if you have more). You can see someone's actual max HP if you revive them in battle; the amount of HP recovery will be displayed in full. A level 99 human or mutant will have max HP in the 2,000s. Robots can just go nuts; they get stronger in the same way humans did in the first game.*** The DS remake completely overhauls the level system with a StatGrinding system like the other ''[=SaGa=]'' games and uses your base stats as a human as the standard, with a cap of 1999 for HP and 99 for other stats. Other classes' stats are calculated as percentages of your human stats. For example, Beasts have 120% the HP of humans, so their HP can go up to 2,399. They have 90% strength, so their max strength would be 89. These are only the base stat caps; they can be exceeded with equipment bonuses.* In the first two ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' games, the PlayerCharacter health cap is 9,999 HP, as is the damage cap. Monster health is by no means so capped. So while your mages do ''less'' damage per second compared to your fighters, and eventually lose hope of one-shotting late-game enemies even when hitting the damage cap, your mages were still important in preventing enemies from getting ''their'' spells off. After all, if your mage hits cap then the enemy's still standing, but if their spell hits the cap your party is wiped...* ''VideoGame/Persona4'' caps the possible EXP gain from a single battle at 65,535, but the yen earned from a single battle can range into the millions.* The ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' games don't generally have a lot of caps existing for programming reasons - there are no limits on damage beyond the practical limits on legal values that can be plugged into the damage formula, for instance, and the various caps on levels, [=EVs=]/stat experience and so on are deliberate gameplay features that impose practical limits on visible stats at the maximum level 100. However, in the first two generations of Pokémon games, battle stats (counting in-battle multipliers) were capped at 999, and in fact there was a glitch that made it possible for a stat to overflow that value in the case of a Marowak holding the Thick Club item (which doubled its Attack stat separately from ordinary stat modifiers) that used the further Attack-raising move Swords Dance twice. While for any ordinary Pokémon using Swords Dance, the game would simply let the Attack stat maximize at 999, the programmers forgot to take into account the possibility of Thick Club Marowak, resulting in the possibility of 'raising' your Attack to a very low number.** In the first-generation games, the gameplay time capped at 255 hours and 59 minutes, while in the later games it is 999 hours and 59 minutes.** Hacking the game reveals that (at least in the third generation), the stats can safely be at 65,535. This makes sense because 999 would require at least 10 bits, but data is stored in bytes. So this would be two bytes minimum (16-bits). So even if you had a 999 Attack Marowak, unless the programmers deliberately checked for it, you'd end up with a 1998 Attack Marowak.** Although the circumstances are functionally impossible, a level 100 Shuckle can potentially deal the most damage in one single attack through the use of numerous stat boosters, by using Helping Hand, the Metronome held item, Power Trick, a Skill Swap to Pure Power or Huge Power, and the Defense Curl/Rollout combo. Also, Shuckle's partner must have the ability Flower Gift and the weather must be sunny. On the 5th impact of Rollout, if used against a level 1 Ledyba or Yanma that have been hit with negative Defense modifiers (such as Screech), it can deal 213,896,052 damage with a critical hit. That's around enough to KO all 719 Pokémon at once dozens if not hundreds of times over.*** Hacking a Pokémon to have the maximum values possible for each stat as well as other enhancements (items, critical hit, super effective, etc.), the cap is well over 471,000,000 points of damage. Talk about [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill extreme overkill]].** In Generations I-IV, the money cap was 999,999 Poké Dollars. It was raised to 7 digits in ''Black'' and ''White''.*** In [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Pokémon R/B/Y/FR/LG]], a bike costs 1,000,000 Pokédollars, which is ''one'' over the player's money cap. You have to get the coupon to obtain it.*** Similarly, in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Pokémon G/S/C and their remakes]], someone on Route 32 will try to sell you a Slowpoke Tail for 1,000,000 Pokédollars; you will never be able to afford it, and it's useless anyway.** The first three Generations allow you to carry 99 of each item. Generation IV and onward allow up to 999 of each item.** In ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'', if an opponent in a dungeon is attacked the damage taken will appear as minus (number) above their heads. The highest number that is shown in the dungeon is -999 in red, but on the text screen below it will say the real amount of damage taken (ex: Caterpie took 1,043 damage!) You can get ''pretty'' strong in those games.** Pokemon are limited to six (carried) per player and to four moves each. Whether these are designer imposed or interfaced induced caps is debatable.* ''VideoGame/{{Postknight}}'': At version 1.0.17(124), the maximum level is 70.* ''VideoGame/ResonanceOfFate'' has an item cap of 999, and a level cap of 300. There are three categories of weapons (handguns, machineguns, and throwing weapons), each with a level cap of 100; a character's total level is the sum of the levels of each weapon type.* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'' has some very low Caps for an RPG. Coins cap at 999 (some items sell for more than half of that) and levels cap at 30 (which takes 9,999 exp to achieve). However, the damage cap is equivalent to most ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games at 9,999, which can be done with a well-timed Geno Whirl, which is really [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill over the top]] considering almost no other attack can break three digits and the highest HP any enemy in the game has is 8,000. The Beetle Mania MiniGame has a score cap of 99,999,999.* ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' had a cap of 65,000-someodd on it's stats. How do we know this? Because a glitch in the programming which makes the game save buffs but not the effects thereof could be exploited to make your stats wrap under and flip around so that you're nigh-unstoppable so long as you don't level up much.* ''VideoGame/TheForceUnleashed'' has its own currency for upgrading force powers, stats and learning new attacks. If you manage to buy every upgrade and still play until you get around 80/90 points (it differs from player to player) you enter a mode with the FanNickname [[LargeHam UNLIMITED POOOOOWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHRRR!!!]]. It rewards you with unlimited health and unlimited force energy to do even more insane actions.* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'', the EXP readout at the end of battle will only go up to 65,535, and any more will cause the counter to roll over back to 0. However, you still gain the 65,536+ EXP and level up properly; it just doesn't report correctly on the victory screen.** The same thing occurred in ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphoniaDawnOfTheNewWorld'', but the cap was 999,999. Since it could be easy to string together a large combo, which on higher difficulties resulted in higher EXP multipliers for said combos, resulting in 100 times or more being moderately trivial, even in boss battles. Combine with NewGamePlus, 10x EXP, and you get bonuses ''much'' higher than the standard EXP for most any enemy that lasts long enough for a good combo (which even then can be a while since juggling prevents enemies from dying).** The Damage dealt by attacks has a funky cap--in theory, it's 6,553,500 for any given hit, [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill which is far more than the Max HP for any enemy in the entire game]]. In practice this won't kill the enemy--instead it will reduce their HP to 0, and the next hit will do them in. Once above 32,767, the DISPLAY for damage becomes negative. Once above 65,535, the display of damage DISAPPEARS. And it's quite possible to do this: Grind enough kills with the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Devil's Arms]] and use a sufficiently strong special attack and you'll do huge damage.* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' plays with this by having three items in the game that ''may'' be priced at an absurdly expensive 9,999 each.* ''VideoGame/{{Willow}}'': The level cap was 16.* ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'': There's no damage cap, and as a result, damage from strong enough attacks can ''overflow and heal the enemy!''** Everything else however, is capped. 100 levels, 100 attack and defence, 9 of any given item, 99 of any given mastered pin, 200 unmastered pins (although you can hold more until you actually go look at them), 999 bravery, and 9,999 HP.** The game also {{Lampshades}} this in the wallet descriptions, such as "Holds up to 999,999 yen, and not one jot more!" and "Can hold exactly 9,999,999 yen. What are the odds!?"* In the original UsefulNotes/PC88 version of ''VideoGame/{{Ys}} I'', and its Windows PC remake, your level cap was Level 24 at 65,535 EXP, resulting in the battle with Dark Fact being very long and hard. ''Ys I and II'' for the UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 had a different leveling scale and was capped at 99,999, making the Fact battle much easier if you level-ground enough. The [=TurboGrafx16=] game still caps the purse at 65,535 gold.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Shoot Em Ups]]* On some versions of ''VideoGame/StarFox64'', the highest score you can get on one stage is 511. The easiest stage to do this on is Area 6 in Expert mode, where you can exceed the medal score by the time you hit the checkpoint.** In other versions, using a cheating device to get a continuously increasing kill count could cause the numbers of the counter to start ''spinning''. It will register as 999 at the end of the stage, however.* The highest composite score obtainable on ''VideoGame/GeometryWars Galaxies'' is 26,843,545,575 -- or [(2^30)-1]x25.* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' games usually have a cap of 9 lives and 8 bombs. If a tenth life is earned, it's turned into an extra bomb instead; if a ninth bomb is earned, it's simply lost. (Some exceptions below.) Earlier games also capped shot power at 128 and later games had a different cap; any further power items were immediately converted to a different type of item, usually worth bonus points.** ''Phantasmagoria of Flower View''[==]'s Extra Mode somewhat averted this by simply making it impossible to earn a tenth life - the player has to start with one life, and no extra lives were awarded after the 8th one.** ''Mountain of Faith'' also had a similar cap - the player has to start with exactly 3 lives, and it is only possible to gain 6 extra lives (3 in the Extra Stage).** A tenth extra life in ''Subterranean Animism'' appears to be simply lost, without being converted into a bomb.** The manual for ''Perfect Cherry Blossom'' also states that there's a score cap of 9,999,999,990, and a Cherry Point cap of 9,999,990. But given that the world record score is just over 3 billion and nobody's ever gotten close to 2 million Cherry Points, the caps essentially have no effect on gameplay. The Cherry Point counter does start to glitch up cosmetically with 7-digit values, though.** In ''The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil'', there is a limit of 640 bullets onscreen at once. Even when facing BonusBoss Flandre Scarlet, this isn't a problem (though ''"And Then Will There Be None?"'' can hit the cap during the late part of the first phase), but if you install one of certain fanpatches that make the game a lot harder, it can cause some of her attacks to [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_3zZZmap8Y exceed that limit and look rather odd]].*** ''Imperishable Night'' also hits the bullet cap on rare occasions, most notably during the Last Word ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTHcUCt4fQc "Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana"]]''.** The PC-98 games roll over very similarly to ''[=Battle Garegga=]'' below: With scores of 100,000,000 points or more, the ten millions digit will be replaced by letters: "A0,000,000" is 100 million points, "B0,000,000" is 110 million points, and so on.** ''Highly Responsive to Prayers'' has a 7-digit score counter; if the player passes 10,000,000 the counter rolls over, but the full score is still stored and is displayed at the evaluation screen at the end of the game.** ''Shoot the Bullet'' can only display individual picture score values up to 999,990. Higher values glitch up the display (although they're still added to the total correctly).** ''Undefined Fantastic Object'' initially had a GameBreakingBug where it would crash trying to display 10-digit scores. This was patched, but the score counter still displays incorrectly if your score is over 2,147,483,647 (2[[superscript:31]]-1), instead displaying your score minus 4,294,967,296 (2[[superscript:32]]) and replacing the negative sign with an "x". Scores do display correctly on the high scores leaderboards and replays menu after the patch, though.** Fangame ''LASERREIMU'' rolls over into letters after 10 billion and caps at Z999999999 (35,999,999,999).* The maximum score in the arcade version of ''VideoGame/MarsMatrix'' is 999,999,999,990. The Dreamcast version adds an additional digit.* ''VideoGame/BattleGaregga'' rolls over oddly: the score counter has 7 digits, and when you achieve what is supposed to be 10,000,000 points, instead of the score counter simply maxing out at 9,999,990, it instead continues rising... but now the millions digit is a letter instead of a number, so a score of 10,000,000 will read as "A,000,000," 11 million is "B,000,000," and so on. The world record is somewhere around "K" million[[note]]20,000,000[[/note]] points.** [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/0001_6757.png Ditto with its]] SpiritualSuccessor VideoGame/ArmedPoliceBatrider* UrbanLegendOfZelda time: the early ''VideoGame/{{Asteroids}}'' arcade machine would apparently progressively slow down and grind to a halt if you collected enough lives, as the computer drew a little ship in the corner of the screen for each life you had, and would naturally take longer to draw more of them.** Apparently there was also a limit of 30 asteroids on the screen at once ([[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 32 objects]], minus one for the player ship, minus one for the enemy ship?), so if you started with enough and shot them in the right order, some of the larger ones would only leave one smaller one behind instead of the usual two.* Even though [[PinballScoring the scores can get ridiculous]] in ''VideoGame/GigaWing'', the cap on score is in no danger of being hit (the world record of 294,631,625,840,450 points is still a far cry from the cap of 9,999,999,999,999,990 points). However, the cap on your score multiplier is 49,999,999, which can very well be reached by a skilled enough player.* The original version of ''[[VideoGame/DonPachi DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu]]'' capped score at 99,999,999,999 points. This could be reached by many players on the first loop of a [[NewGamePlus two-loop game]]. Version 1.5 which came out about a month later added two digits to the score counter.* ''VideoGame/MushihimeSama Futari'' versions 1.01 and 1.5 have a score cap of 3,999,999,999 points. The Black Label version averts this. However, the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 port once again has one; it is possible to reach 9,999,999,999 points in Arrange Mode.* ''VideoGame/{{Espgaluda}} II'' also has a score cap of 3,999,999,999 although the world record is under a billion; the cap has only ever been hit by exploiting a bug in the [=iOS=] port. The Arrange Mode in the Xbox 360 version lifts this cap, although if you have the detailed score display turned on, that display glitches when trying to show a number above 9,999,999,999; the first two digits get replaced by characters after the digit '9' in ASCII (so 10 billion would be ":000000000", 11 billion is ";000000000", 12 billion is "<000000000", and so on).* ''VideoGame/{{Guwange}}'' has a score cap of 99,999,999 points, which has been reached.** The Xbox 360 port [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCFw8hSQkpg&feature=related adds an extra digit, though]] (start at 5:23)* ''VideoGame/{{Galaga}}'' can only display 6 digits for the first player, but can display 7 digits on the second player's side. Either will roll over when it exceeds its limit. For this reason, very skilled players will play on the 2P side so they don't have to keep track of the millions. Also, for whatever reason, [[EveryTenThousandPoints extra lives]] stop being given after 1,000,000 points.* ''VideoGame/FantasyZone'' caps score at 99,999,990 points, which can only be reached by looping the game ''many'' times. The stage counter also stops at 99, which can be reached on the 13th loop. However, the game's NintendoHard; not many gamers can clear the game even once.* ''VideoGame/BattleBakraid'' originally capped the score at 63,999,990, which was a bit too easy to reach. On the Unlimited Version, which removed this limit, expert players have scored nearly twice as many points.* Creator/DataEast shmup ''Battle Wings'' will automatically increase your score to 9,999,999 points if you clear the game. If you go over 10 million points before the end, your score will increase to 99,999,999 points.* ''[[VideoGame/DonPachi DoDonPachi Saidaioujou]]'' appears to store your combo bonus counter in fixed-point format (similar to the Disgaea series, see below) due to the addition of non-integral multipliers, resulting in a cap of 21,474,836 after any active multipliers are applied. However, for whatever strange reason, if this counter overflows, it displays 999,999,999 in narrower-than-usual digits (note that the font usually doesn't change at all; when the counter hits 8 digits, the 8th digit simply runs into the "+" next to the counter) and adds a ridiculous amount of points to your score. [[http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm19892408 These]] [[http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm18383861 videos]] (Website/NicoNicoDouga, free registration and login required) show players exploiting it to earn over a ''trillion'' points in under a minute. At least CAVE seems to have learned their lesson about unexpectedly high scores, since the score counter gracefully shows 13 digits this time around.* ''VideoGame/RiverRaid'' actually [[KillScreen ends]] when you reach the score cap. The counter shows six digits, and when you score what would be 1,000,000, the counter changes to "!!!!!!" and your plane explodes.* ''Desert Falcon'', another UsefulNotes/{{Atari 2600}} game, had a score counter that went back to zero, but had the side-effect of making the score climb more quickly, so it took less time to break the cap again, which made the score climb even faster, etc.* ''VideoGame/{{Hellsinker}}'' takes this and turns it into one of the games main scoring mechanics. You extra lives are capped depending on difficulty selected with less lives on higher ones. However hitting the life cap actually makes it so that you get an Immortality bonus whenever you get an extra life that starts scaling with each successful one.* In ''VideoGame/DangunFeveron'', the bonus multiplier maxes out at 999.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Simulation Games]]* In the SNES ''VideoGame/SimCity'' game, an error in the tax screen allowed a player's money to drop below zero, which instantly pushed it to the maximum value (like the ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' bug), which was truncated to $999,999.** The[[ClassicCheatCode "Million-dollar cheat code"]] works on this principle. First you spend all your money, including on something that generates expenditures. Next you reduce the tax rate and expenditures on the tax screen to 0%. For some reason, holding the L button prevents you from gaining/losing money from the fiscal budget at the end of the year; when you go back to the tax screen and increase the expenditure rates but keep the tax at 0%, you'll get a net loss. Once you release the L button after the calendar rolls over to January, you'll have a negative bank balance and the [[GoodBadBugs error mentioned above]] takes effect.** The PC version of ''VideoGame/SimCity 2000'' had a similar bug in the calculation of loans. By deliberately ruining your credit by taking out horrible loans (25% APR!) you can convince the game to offer you a loan with negative APR. As this just gives you more and more money, you can very quickly get more money than you can ever spend. If you take out several of these loans, you can hit the money cap and find yourself slowly cycling between negative money and tons of cash.** ''VideoGame/SimCity 3000'' caps your maximum money to §9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (§2^63 - 1). Reaching such an insane amount of money so far has only been accomplished with the money trainer, but because the game stores money in the memory as a 64-bit signed integer, if you add one single simoleon to your coffers, your money will roll back to -§2^63, and you'll be instantly kicked from the office. Of course, with all that money, it's not like you're ever gonna need a positive balance again.*** The original ''VideoGame/RailroadTycoon'' had this problem too; don't ever let your cash on hand go over [currency unit dependent on region] 30,000,000 or it'll go that far into the red. (On the other hand, if you get yourself 30,000,000 ''in debt'', it will roll over in the other direction, and you'll suddenly be stinkin' rich.)** A more "game design"-y cap in the ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games comes from demand caps: limits that stifle demand as your city grows, with relief from the caps generally provided by parks & rec (for residential) and connections/ports (for commercial and industrial).* The original ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity'' game had a cap on the amount of ships in a star system; this meant that, if you filled that number up with your own escorts and fighters, you could then command tribute from planets - who, not being able to send out any of their defense fleet, were forced to surrender. All you had to do was ask twice.** The sequels still had caps on how many ships could be present in a star system, but fixed the exploit by mandating that a planet's defense fleet had to be ''destroyed'' for them to surrender. Of course, if you had enough escorts and fighters to almost hit the cap, the planet would send out waves of a ''single'' ship...* ''VideoGame/SimTower'' had several annoying and arbitrary number-of-instance caps: the one most commonly felt was the limit of 63 stairs/escalators, as stairs and escalators were among the most effective ways to ease the perennial elevator congestion, which also had quite a low cap on how many shafts you could build. * ''Videogame/TraumaCenter: Under the Knife'' had a cap for the amount of lacerations that the Kyriaki [[FunWithAcronyms GUILT]] strain could inflict on a patient. After 9 or 10 cuts, it would stop slicing the patient's organs apart so you were free to kill it pretty easily as long as you can keep rubbing them with antibiotic gel and jabbing needles into the patient. Strangely enough, this only seemed to affect the Kyriaki because other GUILT strains could inflict countless lacerations on the patients.* One ridiculous example of this is ''VideoGame/HarvestMoonDS'', which features several mines that go deeper and deeper. The second mine has 255 levels. The third has 999. The fourth ''has 65,535 levels''.* ''VideoGame/UniversalPaperclips'' has an interesting mechanic on a resource cap. The [[AIIsACrapshoot AI you play as]] has an "operations" resource for processing operations (used to buy upgrades), and the cap is limited by memory. If this fills up to full, you produce ''another'', uncapped resource in the form of creativity. Furthermore, if you play the Quantum Computing minigame right, it's possible to go over the operations cap, although it will quickly go back down if it's above maximum.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sports Games]]* You can't score more than 99 runs in ''VideoGame/ArcStyleBaseball3D''. If you get another player home, the scoreboard will still display 99.* In ''VideoGame/MarioSuperSluggers'', the maximum number of stars you can have in a given game is 5. You'll have to use them if you want to get more.* The NES version of '"VideoGame/TecmoSuperBowl'' capped scoring at 99 points per team per game.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Stealth-Based Games]]* In the Outer Ops MiniGame in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'', damage has an [[RPGElements RPG-style]] cap of 9,999. However, Metal Gear ZEKE is capable of breaking the damage limit, and can deal up to 99,999.* In all ''VideoGame/{{Tenchu}}'' games, there's a cap on the total number of items you can carry into any stage, as well as specific cap for each item that limits how many of a single item you can pack along for the ride.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Survival Horror]]* ''Franchise/FatalFrame''** The inventory cap alows 99 of every [[ImprobableWeaponUser film]]-type and health restorative item, like Sacred Water and Herbal Medicine.** The player is allowed to carry only 1 [[OneUp Stone Mirror]] at a time. Averted in ''Fatal Frame V'', where multiple Stone Mirrors can be carried around.* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' - Out of all the enemies, exactly ''one'' type has a damage cap: the chainsaw wielding enemies, with their horrific one-hit kill. No more than about 6 damage can be done to them with any one hit. ** This leads to players wasting magnum (up to 50 damage) and rifle (up to 30 damage) shots on the strangely protected enemies. Without the damage cap, a single 50 damage magnum shot would easily take out Dr. Salvadore's 40+ HitPoints.** It's also disconcerting to the player using the magnum. Since it takes about eight shots to put down Dr. Salvadore for good, adding to his monstrous reputation.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Turn-Based Strategy]]* Statistic caps in ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' are critical for working out the CharacterTiers. The reason the Paladin class isn't unquestionably the best class in the game, for example, is that its caps, particularly strength, are relatively low. (It may still be the best class anyway, but that's neither here nor there.)** The series also has one notable case of stat cap overflow: a Lewyn-fathered Ced in the fourth game can potentially inherit a ''starting'' speed so high it wraps back around to a relatively low number.* Most Creator/NipponIchi games are notable for having nigh-unreachable damage caps (if you grind hard enough, you can eventually inflict millions, if not billions of points in damage. Eventually they can get so high that the game has to list them by K's rather than numerical digits), and rather high level caps, easily going into three and four digits. in fact, most {{Bonus Boss}}es in the ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' series are at least at level two thousand, and it's very possible to bring playable characters' to 9,999. The true BonusBoss from Hell, Baal, originated as a level 4,000 badass. [[LensmanArmsRace Nowadays he's a level 9,999 badass with hitpoints in the billions]], and the game gets around its caps by making you fight '''5 of them at once.'''** The rear of the strategy guide by ''Double Jump'', legendary for writing writeups on how to tweak Nippon Ichi games [[RefugeInAudacity well past the breaking point]], has a screenshot of someone doing 35,136,040,556 damage. That's 35 BILLION. The game's shorthand shows this as a floating "35136M" over the poor sap's head getting hit with that.** The damage cap in ''Disgaea 4'' appears to be 2[[superscript:64]]: 184,467,440,737,095,516.** Finally, in ''Disgaea 3'' they make the level cap meaningless. If you gain enough EXP to level up after 9,999, your stats continue to increase.** In ''Disgaea 3'', the stat cap for any given stat in an item is 1863514, which leads to the best equipment being perfectible through carefully planned Item World trips.** The ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' games limit the amount of {{Mana}} you can hold to 10,000,000. If you have exactly that much, the game displays it as [[DevelopersForesight "Lots of Mana".]]** If you win 10 million or more HL (currency) from a battle, your winnings are displayed as "Super Bonus HL". You can sort of estimate the actual amount by how fast it counted up to "Super Bonus". By the time you're winning that much money though, [[MoneyForNothing there's nothing really useful to spend it on]].** Their games are also notable for averting the "usual caps" for exp. Most of the stored information about a character has 32-bit size (4294967295 cap), while exp cap is much higher (more than 17 times over in the second game), necessitating use of 64-bit size** The trailer for ''VideoGame/Disgaea4APromiseUnforgotten'' makes it a point to advertise this fact ''blatantly'' as soon as possible.--> '''Manifisto Declaration No.1:''' Disgaea promises to deliver ''mega damage'' and ''ultra-high stats''. Level 9,999? 100M damage?! No problem! '''NO PROBLEM!!''' [[RefugeInAudacity Take a dump on the face of common sense. This is Disgaea 4!]]* X-Com has a rather annoying one. Transports carry 80 items of equipment. It doesn't matter how big each piece is, they all count one - a pistol magazine takes up the same amount of space as an Auto cannon.* In '"VideoGame/CodeNameSteam'', the highest score attainable at the end of a mission is 9,999 medals.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Vehicular Combat games]]* ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal'' imposes a different cap on each weapon pickup, so the player can only store an specific amount of each different missile or weapon. These are all based on the weapon's strength (10 Fire missiles, 8 Homing, 5 Power, etc.).[[/folder]]

[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto''** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'' has a 9 digit money counter. If you go one dollar past $99,999,999 (which typically involves doing Vigilante Missions past Level 200 or grinding at the casino), it rolls over and [[DevelopersForesight adds another digit]]. The actual limit is $999,999,999. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation And CJ will still complain about desperately needing money]].** ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' has a hard cap at $2,147,483,647 per character.* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' the majority of items/blocks have a maximum stack of 64. A few have a maximum stack of 16, and before the release of Beta 1.8, food had a max stack of 1. This is slightly different than most examples, as instead of being a maximum holding capacity for a particular item, you can carry as many stacks of the item as will fit into your inventory. The maximum distance you can travel on foot from the map center before block physics stop working and the game becomes completely unplayable is X/Z ±32,000,000 blocks.[[/folder]]

!!Non-Video Game Examples

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]* ''Film/TheLastStarfighter'' uses a high score as a means to recruit candidates. In the novelization, said high score involves breaking the score cap. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]* ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'', being based on video games and the 8-bit era in particular, has a cap of 128 in any given statistic[[note]]punching and kicking power in tons, maximum jump height in meters, and time needed to run 100 meters[[/note]] as the limit of how strong the characters' superpowers can make them. Only one character explicitly reaches the stat cap, but others are capable of doing so temporarily through stat-enhancing items.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]* The TabletopGame RPG based off of the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series even has a damage cap (of 999), simulating the cap of the console games.* The ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' Rules Cyclopedia caps the damage that high level magic-users can deal with their attack spells at twenty dice.** The same cap is used for fall damage, 1d6 per 3m fallen to a maximum of 20d6. This gets hilarious around lvl 10, when characters could fall from orbit and live with a strict rule interpretation. Though fire damage from friction could probably still kill them. What's really fun is the epic spell Nailed to the Sky (from a much later edition), which puts the target in orbit.** Though there is technically no cap on level in D&D, in 3rd edition, the rules balance tends to erode after level 5-7, and the standard game didn't have specific level up bonuses past level 20 in any class. The ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook'' extends this to about level 40, but any semblance of balance is long since out the window at that point.** And all of this is HIGHLY dependent on the edition you're playing and, in some editions, your character class and race as well (Feats did not exist until 3rd Edition, the "colored box" version capped level at 36 for humans and somewhere around 10 for demihumans, etc.)*** 4th Edition caps the levels at 30. ''Sort of.'' The mathematics in 4e is linear, so you can actually extend it all indefinitely and everything remains relatively well balanced, there are even enemies that are over level 30, although they're all gods or god-like beings. [=PCs=] who hit 30 get to finish whatever it is they are doing and then are consumed by their Epic Destiny which, more often than not, results in ascension to godhood. They do, however, run out of powers and such. Insert auto-power generation programs!* ''TabletopGame/PsionicsTheNextStageInHumanEvolution'':** Stats for normal humans are capped at 6.** Stats for espers and certain special humans are capped at 10.** Espers with somakinesis have a base stat cap of 10, like any other esper, however, the passive bonus to speed and strength they receive means that their passive maximum speed and strength can go up to 14 and they can temporarily boost them up to 18. To put that in perspective, a boosting, max level somakinetic with a base speed of 10 can run three times faster than the fastest human to ever live.* [[TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness World of Darkness]] live-action games, put damage caps on [=PCs=] in sanctioned {{LARP}}s. This was one of many fixes attempted to make the tabletop rules work in live-action, although in practice mid-powered characters hit cap very easily and high-powered characters were basically unaffected by any penalties.* ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones'': Traits range from 1 to 5 dice, Mind and Body traits can't get past 3 without augmentations, and the surgeries that enable higher traits can only be used to raise traits from 4 to 5 three times. Proficiencies range from 0 to 4 dots, the number of 3-dot skills that a character can have is limited by their Mind:Strength stat and achieving 4 dots in a proficiency requires a special quest. And the number of Focus abilities is limited by the number of proficiencies at 3 dots or higher.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theme Parks]]* On ''Ride/MenInBlackAlienAttack'' at [[Ride/UniversalStudios Universal Studios Florida]], the maximum amount of points you can score is 999,999 before maxing out.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]* ''WebComic/KidRadd'' plays with this trope, making sloppy programming of damage cap calculation a [[http://www.bgreco.net/kidradd/comic335.htm major plot point]].* In a weird case of parodying, ''Webcomic/{{Adventurers}}!'' features (mostly in the final battle sequences) a cap of 9,999, with better attacks basing themselves on doing more hits than just 1. The interesting part is that three characters actually break this cap: a deity turned into a summon ([[http://adventurers.keenspot.com/d/20040205.html 99,999]]), Karashi with her ultimate weapon ([[http://adventurers.keenspot.com/d/20050804.html 27400]]) and a powered-up Spybot, who had been never really been known for his combat skills.** The most interesting part: the latter's damage is achieved by a series of melee attacks (each hit goes to 15,000 or something). Although he was flying and rocket boosted, this unnamed attack beats many attacks that were prepared for turns.** The party's [[BagOfInventory shared inventory]] appears not to allow having more than 99 of any item.** Also, in an interesting metafictional example, the comic number reaches # 999 when the heroes reach the final boss and stays at that for the rest of the comic.* Damage caps usually come into play in ''Webcomic/CaptainSNES'' whenever characters enter into a world with a JRPG system, mainly because Alex is obsessive enough to have leveled his characters as far as they will go. In one particularly interesting example; a [[spoiler:Sorrow-possessed]] [[VideoGame/ChronoTrigger Lucca]] manages to break both her usual health cap (going from 999/999 to 0000/0000), and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'''s damage cap. However, she doesn't go past 9,999 by going into five digits, she does it by using four digits... in ''[[http://www.captainsnes.com/2004/07/22/532/ base sixteen]]''! [[note]] For those who don't want to work out the hexadecimal notation, "[=D6DB=]" comes out to 55003 points of damage.[[/note]] Lucca {{Lampshades}} this in a few comics: "But I did more damage to you than is even ''possible!''"** When she scans him after the {{Lampshade}}, he's short of his maximum health by [[ShownTheirWork that exact amount]].* ''Webcomic/{{Erfworld}}'': The world has caps on most things, both hard caps (impossible to exceed) and soft caps (impractical or inefficient to exceed).** Cities cap at level 5. Their cities can be highly customized so that they are ''effectively'' higher level, but they will not produce extra Schmuckers or give more money when razed.** Theoretically, a Side can have an unlimited number of cities, but there is a diminishing return on Schmuckers that cities produce. At around ten to fifteen cities, all your cities will be producing next to nothing. Haffaton once had ''sixty-nine'' cities, but they only managed it with judicious use of magic (which their Chief Caster squandered in an effort to prove that her discipline was superior), and even then they had a laughably small army that even the smallest Side would find easy pickings. The standard way of getting around this cap is to spin off some of the cities into their own allied Side.** Sides have no limit to the amount of Schmuckers they can keep in their treasury, but barbarian warlords can only hold an amount in their purse equal to their level times a thousand. They can get around it by carrying gems that can later be converted into Schmuckers.** There is no known maximum unit level, but experience required to advance in level appears to operate on a logarithmic scale (it's hard to say for sure, since Erfworlders don't have an innate sense of their own experience bar). Regardless, gaining higher levels is extremely difficult; level 10 warlords and casters are rare but a Side will usually have at least one, while anything above that is almost unheard of. The highest level we've actually seen is a level 12 Hippiemancer.** Stacks are small formations of units. Stacks gain a bonus for each unit in the stack, maxing out at eight and decaying from there. Eight-man stacks are therefore quite common, but the actual hard cap is a function of the size of the units making up the stack. The smallest units, like scouting bats, have a theoretically unlimited stack size. While normally they're too weak to be useful, Transylvito has found that stuffing a few dozen bats into the Chief Warlord's stack makes each individual bat on par with heavy infantry, albeit of the GlassCannon variety.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pinballs]]* {{Pinball}} machines from before when score reels were introduced in the 1950s used backlights. The machine could not display more than the highest-valued one.* Any game that uses score reels will usually just loop back to 0 points (sometimes going to its maximum possible value before that) if the score became more than they could display. Some later games that used four reels would have a "10,000" light to indicate that they had rolled over. Later on, some games with five reels followed suit with a "100,000" light. Same with games that use LED score counters, except the cap is usually 6-8 digits.* The UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 pinball game ''Videogame/AlienCrush'' has a score cap of 999,999,900 points. If you manage to max it out, the entire table explodes and you are given the message [[AWinnerIsYou "Congratulations !! You are the greatest player"]]. After that, the game immediately takes you to the high score list for you to enter your initials.** The SpiritualSuccessor, ''Videogame/DevilsCrush'', has a cap of 999,999,990 points. Reaching it will treat you to a very brief ending with a woman and a pinball.* Pretty much any Data East or Sega game has a cap of 9,999,999,990 - but your score merely stops increasing, as opposed to rolling over.* ''Pinball/AttackFromMars'' rolls around at [[PinballScoring 100 billion]] points. If you go over that, your score will be displayed with leading zeroes, as if the hundred billions digit is cut off (i.e. 100 billion would be 00,000,000,000) but your score will display fully on the high score table and the game will keep track of scores supposedly up to 1 trillion minus ten. It also caps the bonus multiplier at 250x.** ''Pinball/JohnnyMnemonic'' is one of a very few games that will happily display entire scores of 100B+ during gameplay, but it too loses track of all scores beyond 1 trillion.** Stern's Star Wars had one code revision that allowed Victory Multiball to continue almost indefinitely, all while milking extremely high-scoring shots from other modes in progress. This could cause scores to reach the hundred-billions, and the game would indeed display all 12 digits, notwithstanding the illegitimate nature of those scores.* Capcom's ''Break Shot'' has an aversion to this; it [[{{Retraux}} simulates electromagnetic score reels on a DMD]] and has room for 7 digits. However, if you roll the counter it displays "Over The Top x" above the reels; essentially the ten millions place of your score.** ''Pinball/CirqusVoltaire'' has a counter for the 100 millions above the normal score counter which only shows 8 digits.* ''Psycho Pinball'', in common with most pinball games, had the capacity for astronomical scores; unfortunately, the scoreboard only registered nine digits, so you had to track the number of billions manually. (I have reached three and a half billion a couple of times.)* Early versions of ''[[Pinball/CaptainFantastic Capt. Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy]]'' only had five digit reels to display players' scores; when a player rolled over the score, the message "Over the Top" would light up on the backglass. Later versions added a sixth digit to the display instead.* Done intentionally in ''[[VideoGame/ProPinballBigRaceUSA Pro Pinball: Big Race USA]]'', as your fare meter cannot go over $1,000,000. If this happens, you're supposed to go to Jay's Junk and buy the "Million Dollar Madness" WizardMode.* ''Pinball/TalesOfTheArabianNights'' rolls the score over at a billion points, even though there's no technical reason to do so. Since the game averts PinballScoring, even reaching 100 million points is a remarkable achievement.* ''Pinball/{{Earthshaker}}'' caps the number of miles traveled at 99. Shooting the ramp with the miles maxed awards an End of the Road Bonus.** Similarly, ''Pinball/{{Whirlwind}}'' caps Skyway Tolls at 99. Any more shots will show "Skyway Paid For".* Creator/{{Gottlieb}}'s ''Pinball/JamesBond007'', a [[TimedMission time-based pinball game,]] caps the number of "Time Units" a player can have at 50 seconds.* Averted with the Mansion Rooms in ''Pinball/TheAddamsFamily'', each of which provides a predetermined award (which the player is notified of in advance), and demonstrates why caps exist: The game will let you enter as many Mansion Rooms as you're able to, and the number will keep going up and up. The issue is that the machine was programmed only up to the [[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 255th]] Mansion Room. After that, the machine starts looking for award data in game code not meant for the Mansion Rooms, causing a lot of weird glitches and bugs. Most of these are GoodBadBugs though, with the glitched awards mostly being ludicrously large (but random-looking) amounts of points.* Prior to ''Pinball/GameOfThrones'' which needed to (and does) handle scores over 10 billion, many modern-era Stern games roll over at 2^32 (4,294,967,296). When this happens, the game will insert a '4' into the ones' digit of your score (presumably since it's trying to subtract 2^32 from your score), and if it happens again, it becomes an '8'. Unfortunately, the high score table also does not track the actual score.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]* Many {{Game Show}}s put limits on how much contestants can win and/or how long they can stay champion before retiring. See GameShowWinningsCap.* The current highest possible one-day score on ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' is $566,400. This is only obtainable under if ALL of the following conditions are met:** One player has to respond to all clues correctly, completely shutting out the other two contestants.** The first round's Daily Double has to be in the $200 slot (the current lowest value per clue).** The second round's two Daily Doubles have to be in the $400 position in two different categories.** The Daily Doubles MUST be the last clues selected in their respective rounds.** The contestant must go double-or-nothing on all three Daily Doubles and respond correctly to each.** The contestant must also go double-or-nothing on the Final Jeopardy clue and, once again, respond correctly.* ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' ran into this when they got a contestant who won more than $100,000 (this was when the show had returning champions). Only the last 5 digits fit on the electronic board, prompting the production team to draw a "1" on a piece of paper and hand it to Sajak so he could hold it up next to the other digits.* ''Series/PressYourLuck'' gives a similar example that may qualify as an [[AvertedTrope aversion]]. The score displays for the contestants could only fit six characters: one for the dollar sign and five for the digits. When Michael Larson broke the $100,000 barrier in his infamous performance, the score display just showed the number without the dollar sign, i.e., "110237" instead of "$110237".* ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' also had a cap on the display board for the one bid games. There was only enough room for a dollar sign and 4 digits, which wasn't a problem until some contestants wanted to gain attention by [[WhatAnIdiot making bids in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions]]. When the display boards were upgraded to run with more current technology, contestants that make ridiculous bids can have their bids fit on the board.** So far, there has actually been one ''serious'' use case of allowing five-digit bids: one of the One Bid items in a 2017 "Dream Car Week" episode was... a car! * ''[[Series/DoubleDare1986 Family Double Dare]]'' had this humorous aversion. The Nickelodeon run originally used the three-digit scoreboards in the upfront game but one family dominated with a $1,050 blowout win. The display could only read "050" leading to Marc claiming they broke the scoreboard.* When ''Nadia Comaneci'' scored the world's first perfect 10 at an Olympic gymnastics event, the scoreboard could not correctly display the result, so some brief confusion occured when it showed "1.0" instead.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]* Many laws of chemistry, physics, and biology define caps such as the speed of light ("Nothing can go faster than light"), terminal velocity ("A given object can't fall faster than this speed in a given substance at a given density"), and carrying capacity ("An ecosystem cannot support more than this number of these types of organisms").** Terminal velocity is somewhat of an aversion, however, as an object ''can'' fall faster than its terminal velocity given that it was initially propelled downward by an outside force, but will eventually be slowed to its terminal velocity due to the resultant greater drag force.** An odd example of a cap is velocity; you can never go faster than c ''relative to another object'', but because of the nature of relativity, you ''can'' accelerate at a constant rate forever in your own frame of reference.* Similarly, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Zero absolute zero]] (−273.15°C or −459.67°F) can not be achieved, as per the Third law of Thermodynamics. Oddly, negative temperatures (measured in Kelvin[[note]]There are no "degrees" Kelvin. Just Kelvin.[[/note]]) are possible, but are actually the HOTTEST possible temperatures, as heat will always flow from a negative temperature system to a positive temperature system.* Planck's constants are essentially fundamental caps on quantum mechanics. These describe something like the smallest amount of time and length anything "meaningful" happens to the maximum mass two point quanta can have before creating a black hole on interaction. Most of these units are actually beyond human comprehension, except planck mass, which is about the mass of a flea egg.* 32-bit time variables on Unix-like systems will roll over in a few decades unless they are changed to 64-bit variables. They store the current date and time as seconds since January 1, 1970 at midnight. The number of seconds will go over [[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 2^31-1]] on January 19, 2038. Older UsefulNotes/AppleMacintosh systems store the date and time as an unsigned 32-bit integer counting the number of seconds since January 1, 1904; this will go over 2^32-1 at February 6, 2040. (Fortunately, it's relatively easily fixed for good. Moving all our time fields into 64 bit variables won't be trivial, but once we have the next rollover will happen on December 4, ''292,277,026,596''. For those keeping score at home, [[TimeAbyss at that point the universe will be over 21 times its current age]] and we will [[{{Understatement}} probably not be using Unix anymore]].)** Then again, [[FamousLastWords that's what they said about the 32-bit integer...]]* On December 3, 2014, the official video of PSY's Gangnam Style on Youtube actually [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome broke the view counter via variable overflow, as no one ever expected a single video to rack up over 2,147,483,647 views]]. It has since been fixed, but ''damn''.[[/folder]]----